Should Lusternia reduce conflict between cities and communes?

by Estarra

Back to Common Grounds.

Celina2009-05-23 20:20:51
QUOTE (Deschain @ May 23 2009, 08:16 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Then that must have been the only line you read. You can't "farm" the system because it's entirely up to people if they choose to fight you or not. People don't respawn and just stand there waiting for you to kill them like mobs do.

Also, probably the best reason that you're wrong about this is something that (Shamarah I think) said: other IRE's give a lot of xp for killing people, and also have a much less strict pk-control system (Imperian doesn't even have one at all), but they don't have problems with people trying to 'farm' other people for rewards. It's just not possible to farm people. Running away is a really, really easy thing to do, unless you get very unlucky. Also, I think you're forgetting that off prime areas are open PK, you should expect to be killed there if you go there.

Also, it may be difficult to understand at first, but the type of system I was describing rewards players more for participating in PvP and conflict quests/mechanics than it does for killing any one person - although the rewards for killing any one person should be increased from what they are now. As it stands, killing another player, unless they are a total newb (which is in bad taste anyway), is a very difficult thing to do. And you can only lose things by doing it. You either die and lose defs, resources, and xp, or you win and just lose the first one. You don't gain anything.

And Sojiro stated that he would prefer xp loss to remain on death, but for defenses to stay up or something if you die in a PvP zone. That would be fine - there needs to be some penalty for dying in PvP, but it needs to be much less severe than it is now.


What? Have you played Achaea? PK is a ridiculous mess over there. Farming "PK cause" and kills is way out of hand. Now, that's not because there are rewards, admittidly, just because the pk system is so easy to abuse.

As much as you want to dismiss reality, if you put rewards for PK (xp buffs, gold, etc) and the rewards are decent, they will be farmed. Your argument that "people choose to fight" is entirely moot. People can choose to fight now, and there are still are tons of issues. Reality is if it can be abused, it will be. I just don't see any way to make a pk rewards system not farmable without strict admin policing (which they probably won't do) or making it really complex. Really, you make it sound like no one walks around collecting essence or doing whatever, or the ones that do are all demis with solid systems.

As it stands, conflict thrives on attacking the other org, not personal rewards, which I believe is the only way to go if you don't want a MUD to devolve into a PK fiesta. Additionally, the loss for deaths is not bad. Sucks at the time, sure, but you promptly get over it. I've died dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times on my way to demi, but I still got there.

Rewards are a bad idea.
Vathael2009-05-23 21:23:06
How about, we keep the avenger system and all that to protect the noobs and such but add in something like the achaea champion/infamy system where if you keep engaging in pk on prime you get more infamous and once you are infamous you can be attacked by anyone on any plane including prime and if you die the person that killed you won't get status. I do dislike people that jump novices and then run and hide til their declare goes away when I come to defend, I end up declaring and killing them and then they hide behind victim status and kill more novices and then there's nothing I can do about it. Those that don't want to get involved in PK on prime get to keep the same old avenger deal and those that do want to get the whole infamy thing. I like the idea of champions and getting paid to take contracts and kill people. Those that choose to be "Champions" or whatever it could be called can be permanently free PK until they decide to quit it after a certain amount of time.
Estarra2009-05-23 21:28:55
QUOTE (Vathael @ May 23 2009, 02:23 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
How about, we keep the avenger system and all that to protect the noobs and such but add in something like the achaea champion/infamy system where if you keep engaging in pk on prime you get more infamous and once you are infamous you can be attacked by anyone on any plane including prime and if you die the person that killed you won't get status. I do dislike people that jump novices and then run and hide til their declare goes away when I come to defend, I end up declaring and killing them and then they hide behind victim status and kill more novices and then there's nothing I can do about it. Those that don't want to get involved in PK on prime get to keep the same old avenger deal and those that do want to get the whole infamy thing. I like the idea of champions and getting paid to take contracts and kill people. Those that choose to be "Champions" or whatever it could be called can be permanently free PK until they decide to quit it after a certain amount of time.


Sorry, but I don't think that would be right for Lusternia. I dislike opt-in PK (champion) systems.

(This is getting off-topic.)
Munsia2009-05-23 21:35:02
The way I've always seen it is the people that are in the middle are just the defenders, and that's how I've always treated them. If you jump into the fray during a defense instead if sitting in your manse or influencing then I don't really care. I understand people can't grasp the concept of pvp but there are those who know their skills, and have a system....




edit: To keep on topic. I really think you should remove the nexus worlds. Remove the constructs...remove the bonus. We were fine without them, when it was introduced it was suppose to be a way to make Aetherspace worth having....but it's been more of a headache overall. I've had my fair share of attack/defend of such areas (More attack), so I can honestly say it doesn't interest me at all and I'd be content to let it go. The only REAL bonus to this was that the warriors/monks/bards could get to the other planes without assistance.
Unknown2009-05-23 21:43:17
QUOTE (Estarra @ May 23 2009, 04:02 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
snip

Have nihilists and celestines keep their pacts if their entities die: I'm not sure it is feasible to block the guardian powers while maintaining the pacts. I have always liked the RP of this and am not crazy about losing this feature.

snip


That's fine, but the fact is, Guardians are severely limited in this aspect compared to wiccans. If you drop the Supernals/Lords, guardians are next to useless. If you drop the avatars, wiccans shrug and keep on killing things.
Unknown2009-05-23 21:57:14
QUOTE (Estarra @ May 23 2009, 04:02 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Rewards for participating in conflict situations: Several people have said this is a good idea in theory but it is still extremely vague to me how it would work in practice. How do you determine when there is a conflict? I think somehow 'flagging' people would end up being a nightmare which just leaves designating certain areas as conflict areas which means anyone in the area would benefit from the 'rewards'. So what would these rewards be? If the 'reward' is not losing xp if you are defending the area, what is the reward for attacking the area? Is it more xp? In that case, one could simply up the xp in the area overall for everyone and call it a day. But if there is an xp increase on those areas/planes, could people somehow be able to game this? Be rather nice if you don't lose xp for defending a plane as well as getting increased xp for questing/killing on that plane! Maybe that's okay, maybe not. One thing I wouldn't really want to see is a complex systems of if's, and's and but's which would make it difficult for many players to understand (not to mention difficult to code).


Essentially, yes, the entire area would be made a 'conflict area'. And yes, anyone in the area would benefit from the rewards, that's sort of the point. If you're a melder who is running around like crazy but not killing people, shouldn't you be subject to the same rewards that a person who is doing the killing is?

This is the reason that domoths aren't as popular as they could be, which Vathael pointed out - it isn't worth it for them personally. You lose a lot of essence as a demigod, but don't gain anything for your character in return. I think that currently Lusternia puts too much stock in how much people want to work to benefit their orgs over themselves.

One example that I'm thinking of - if people raid Celestia, they're trying to kill angels and Supernals. Whenever an angel is killed by a person in the attacking org, everyone in that org gets some experience or karma, or even a new system of rewards if you feel like inventing one. But if you're on the defending side, for every person your group kills, everyone gets some experience. Of course this will be limited by people from another organization trying to assist the defending one, but that will be made up if that org goes to support the other one when they are getting attacked.

As you can see, this scales. There's virtually no greater reward for killing angels by yourself - but everyone, losers and winners, benefit in some way if a big raid is going on.

But still, individual perks should be boosted for 1v1 PvP, for reasons illustrated before. Right now you stand to gain nothing from fighting someone, but you can lose a lot.
Estarra2009-05-23 22:04:21
QUOTE (Deschain @ May 23 2009, 02:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Essentially, yes, the entire area would be made a 'conflict area'. And yes, anyone in the area would benefit from the rewards, that's sort of the point. If you're a melder who is running around like crazy but not killing people, shouldn't you be subject to the same rewards that a person who is doing the killing is?

This is the reason that domoths aren't as popular as they could be, which Vathael pointed out - it isn't worth it for them personally. You lose a lot of essence as a demigod, but don't gain anything for your character in return. I think that currently Lusternia puts too much stock in how much people want to work to benefit their orgs over themselves.

One example that I'm thinking of - if people raid Celestia, they're trying to kill angels and Supernals. Whenever an angel is killed by a person in the attacking org, everyone in that org gets some experience or karma, or even a new system of rewards if you feel like inventing one. But if you're on the defending side, for every person your group kills, everyone gets some experience. Of course this will be limited by people from another organization trying to assist the defending one, but that will be made up if that org goes to support the other one when they are getting attacked.

As you can see, this scales. There's virtually no greater reward for killing angels by yourself - but everyone, losers and winners, benefit in some way if a big raid is going on.

But still, individual perks should be boosted for 1v1 PvP, for reasons illustrated before. Right now you stand to gain nothing from fighting someone, but you can lose a lot.



Um. This sounds complicated, and I'm still a little confused. You kill something and everyone in the org gets xp or a reward? And this scales? Could you clarify your idea somewhat?
Celina2009-05-23 22:08:04
QUOTE (Deschain @ May 23 2009, 04:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
But still, individual perks should be boosted for 1v1 PvP, for reasons illustrated before. Right now you stand to gain nothing from fighting someone, but you can lose a lot.


I still disagree with your idea, but specifically this part. I don't want this issue bogged down with misinformation. The vast majority of the time, you lose very little. Don't over dramatize xp loss and defenses to make your point.
Dakkhan2009-05-23 22:20:39
How about this... just make PvP kills a lot less detrimental to XP loss, and people won't mind as much when they get ganked. Plus, they may fight more. This -shouldn't- be too hard to implement, and there's no real downside to it as far as I can tell. Just less grief for victims. Since you die on the battlefield, maybe Klangratch summons your soul and congratulates you. I don't know.

Here's another crazy idea - put all potions on the same balance. Maybe now when fighting, I won't be drinking several vials at once between swings. Other than messing up systems, which is a definite unfortunately, this would probably make it easier for younger fighters to stick afflictions. Only problem is... the same thing with Demi-Gods. Hrm
Munsia2009-05-23 22:23:52
QUOTE (Dakkhan @ May 23 2009, 06:20 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Here's another crazy idea - put all potions on the same balance. Maybe now when fighting, I won't be drinking several vials at once between swings. Other than messing up systems, which is a definite unfortunately, this would probably make it easier for younger fighters to stick afflictions. Only problem is... the same thing with Demi-Gods. Hrm


Screwing with the potion system is detrimental to everyone and would let aff's stack too easily
Dakkhan2009-05-23 22:30:13
I like things that are detrimental to everyone.

You MUD people are tooooo spoiled XD
Nienla2009-05-23 22:38:43
This eleven page thread has made things more complicated than they have to be. Keep conflict the way it is. There's nothing wrong with it.
Unknown2009-05-23 22:48:41
QUOTE
Rewards for participating in conflict situations

Base reward on city/commune membership and enemy status. If a member of Glomdoring kills an enemy of Night in the ethereal glomdoring, or an enemy of Crow in the aspect area, he or she will be rewarded. If a member of Celest kills an enemy of Celestia on Celestia, or an enemy of the Tidal Lords on water, they will be rewarded. The problem with this would be that you would not be rewarded for defending an allies' plane - that is, if a Mag defends Celestia against the forests he won't gain a PK benefit. This could be a good thing, really, as it would encourage independence among the orgs. A workaround could be added in, but things might get too complicated at that point.

Rewards could be points or tokens redeemable for temporary artifacts. For example, gather X amount of tokens and you can trade them in for a transplanar prism with 4 uses before it poofs. Could use existing artifacts or introduce dumbed-down versions of them.

QUOTE
Remove power loss from the city vs. commune quests

Feel free to reduce the power loss, or raise other power loss to be more on par with it. People have generally agreed in this thread that a nexus's power means little or nothing to them on a personal basis, and reducing the damage that could be done to them would only make power seem less important.

QUOTE
Make the quest for the Star/Necromentate easier

Could you make it less tedious without making it easier? Perhaps reduce the sheer number of squids/zoo animals/etc. that are needed but make them harder to kill or otherwise get from point A to point B.

QUOTE
Have nihilists and celestines keep their pacts if their entities die: I'm not sure it is feasible to block the guardian powers while maintaining the pacts. I have always liked the RP of this and am not crazy about losing this feature.

This has been a feature of the game since day one and I see no reason to change it. Should make it so symbols can still be used while a cosmic lord is down, though. Otherwise you're punishing bashing as well as PvP and really neutering deepbond.

QUOTE
Make raising avatars/supernals/demon lords easier: What if moondancers/shadowdancers/celestines/nihilists simply get a bonus to raise them? That'd be an rp solution that gives those guilds a little more importance with the bond between them and their associations.

As long as it's not much easier, and no easier if there isn't a wiccan/guardian around. Would their essence be worth double? Or would they have an ability that lets them focus on an avatar/cosmic lord's revival? Make them stand in the room and do it, allowing them to be disrupted.

QUOTE
Remove the nexus world conflict quests: I still haven't really heard good arguments to keep it and am still leaning at their removal (either permanent or temporary).

And I haven't heard a good argument to remove them. Taking these out would just make aetherspace more useless than it already is, and that seems to go completely against what the Admins want at this point. A lot can be done to change these quests without simply removing them, and I urge you to mess around with power costs/losses, construct downtime, etc. before doing anything drastic.
Rika2009-05-24 00:03:13
QUOTE (Azoth Nae'blis @ May 24 2009, 10:48 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Could you make it less tedious without making it easier? Perhaps reduce the sheer number of squids/zoo animals/etc. that are needed but make them harder to kill or otherwise get from point A to point B.


A quest like this can never be "hard" in the long run, as everyone would know how to do it soon enough. The only options you have are tedious or easy. Unfortunately, Lusternian quests, especially conflict quests, tend to be over-the-top with their tediousness.
Unknown2009-05-24 00:30:58
The Star/Necro/Supernal/Demonlord quests aren't difficult at all. They're just tedious because their basic mechanic is camping respawns. Subsituting "camp respawns untill you have 100 borgles" for some other requirement is all that is needed. Possible options:

- The Blob portion of the Ladantine quest is not difficult because you can use any kind of corpse. It is not tedious because you get the required amount of dead things long before you run out of things to kill.

- 100 links of DARCALL LINK GORGULU or use aethership vortexes. Again, you basically are not going to run out of these before you have enough.

- Domoths. Anything where you aren't limited by the rate that quest mobs respawn is fine.
Casilu2009-05-24 00:38:11
*cough*Wyrmlingquestthing*coughcough*
Unknown2009-05-24 02:13:48
QUOTE (Estarra @ May 23 2009, 06:04 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Um. This sounds complicated, and I'm still a little confused. You kill something and everyone in the org gets xp or a reward? And this scales? Could you clarify your idea somewhat?


Okay...lets say that Magnagora raids Celestia, and Celest goes up to defend. Lets refer to this as a 'raid'.

Lets say there are 5 people on each side, for simplicities sake. Lets say that Celest1 is an Aqua, and he/she is running around trying to keep their meld up, trying not to get killed. They not are focusing on fighting at all. Now lets say that Celest2 is a Paladin, and his primary focus is dealing as much damage as he can to whoever the current target may be. Whenever Celest2 kills Mag1, he gets experience. More than he would currently receive now, because rewards are pitiful for PvP. But, Celest1, Celest3, Celest4, and Celest5 also receive a reward. Also, I'll say it now, I'm using xp as a generic reward. You can replace it with anything you like. Xp, karma, buffs, esteem, or something entirely new if you want to invent something to give to players.

This would work the other way around, too. If Mag1 kills Celest1, the other Mag people (only in the same area, btw, this doesn't go to everyone in the entire org who may be sitting in their manse or something) get a reward.

Now, lets say that Mag1 has a good force going, good fighters, they're just better all around. They push through the defenders, and take down a supernal. Everyone in the group gets experience for this. They would also get xp for any angels killed along the way, though not nearly as much as for a supernal. And remember, xp is a generic reward. You could be giving them gold or something. But it -has- to be personal - you can't have it give power back to mag or something, no one would care, just as no one really cares about doing domoths to buff their org.

The reason this scales is because the rewards are essentially the same if it's 5v5, or 20v20, or 1v1. If you're in a group of 20, and one of your friends (you could do it by allies list if you don't like an org wide thing) gets a kill, then everyone else would share in that victory. It rewards people who are trying, but may not have the ability to land killing blows, or maybe they're just too low level.

And I don't see how this could be farmed or gamed, and I don't see how it would be too complicated too code. Whenever someone gets a kill, the code could iterate through every person on that plane who is in the same org as that person. Same as for taking down a supernal.

Player1 -> kill -> supernal

for(every player in this area in org as Player1)
{
give reward to player
}

I think there's a lot of room for creativity here too. The rewards that you could give out could change depending on the type of area. Are you fighting in Celestia, Nil, a nexus world, a domoth realm, an god's order realm? The amount possibilities is enormous here, but the risk vs. rewards in place need a serious overhaul. The number of and magnitude of the negative penalties for participating in PvP need to be reduced, with some personal rewards introduced. It seems like each new conflict mechanic we get is entirely focused on giving players the ability to either hurt an entire org or help an entire org - and the individual, the person who makes up the real essence of the game, gets glossed over.

Also, about the guardian/pacts...we really, really, really, don't like this RP. But, just to defend the RP reason for keeping pacts...a guardians devotion to the ideals of their patrons that they pact with should transcend death.

And Celina, your argument really doesn't make any sense.

QUOTE
What? Have you played Achaea? PK is a ridiculous mess over there. Farming "PK cause" and kills is way out of hand. Now, that's not because there are rewards, admittidly, just because the pk system is so easy to abuse.


If it has nothing to do with rewards, then why are you using this as your leading argument against the idea of rewards?

QUOTE
As much as you want to dismiss reality, if you put rewards for PK (xp buffs, gold, etc) and the rewards are decent, they will be farmed. Your argument that "people choose to fight" is entirely moot. People can choose to fight now, and there are still are tons of issues. Reality is if it can be abused, it will be. I just don't see any way to make a pk rewards system not farmable without strict admin policing (which they probably won't do) or making it really complex. Really, you make it sound like no one walks around collecting essence or doing whatever, or the ones that do are all demis with solid systems.


Site examples of where a reward system for PvP has created problems with farming in a game. As I said, Imperian gives nice xp for killing people and you don't have a problem with people trying to farm other people or trying to game the system. Also, saying that my argument is moot because people can 'choose to fight now' and we have issues is a logical fallacy, since you're trying to invalidate my argument with a fact on a totally unrelated issue - it has nothing to do with rewards. It's called a 'straw man' fallacy actually, creating a somewhat convoluted instance of the original argument and attacking it and trying to invalidate the original argument. And you can't say that there are 'tons of issues' and 'conflict is thriving' in the same post.

QUOTE
As it stands, conflict thrives on attacking the other org, not personal rewards, which I believe is the only way to go if you don't want a MUD to devolve into a PK fiesta. Additionally, the loss for deaths is not bad. Sucks at the time, sure, but you promptly get over it. I've died dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times on my way to demi, but I still got there.


Conflict isn't exactly what you would call 'thriving' right now - that's the reason we have this topic created by the game designer. Also, loss for death may not be bad for you, but people tend to forget that conglutinate is a trans skill that characters aren't born with.

QUOTE
Rewards are a bad idea.


This fallacy is called 'ad hominem' - just because you attacked the idea doesn't make it a bad one. But really, present a game that rewards people for PvP in a reasonable quantity and has ultimately suffered from it, and I'll say you're right. But saying that rewarding people because 'you' can't imagine a system that can't be gamed, or because another game failed due to a pvp problem that wasn't reward related, or because this game currently has conflict problems is not the way to argue against it.
Unknown2009-05-24 02:39:15
Rather than having it based on organization membership, why not just have personal rewards be based on squad membership? If you are a member of Shuyin's Squad in the same local area as Shuyin, and Shuyin kills 1 Glomhater in that local area, then Shuyin gets a fairly large amount of essence and you, along with all other members of that squad in that local area, get a smaller amount of essence.
Unknown2009-05-24 02:40:53
QUOTE (Salvation @ May 23 2009, 10:39 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Rather than having it based on organization membership, why not just have personal rewards be based on squad membership? If you are a member of Shuyin's Squad in the same local area as Shuyin, and Shuyin kills 1 Glomhater in that local area, then Shuyin gets a fairly large amount of essence and you, along with all other members of that squad in that local area, get a smaller amount of essence.


Yep, I was actually thinking about this as I wrote that post, I just wanted to keep things in the most general terms. Squads would definitely be a great way to do this, and probably much simpler to code.
Haghan2009-05-24 02:42:15
Ok, well here's a crazy suggestion. I based if off a similar change in 4e dungeons and dragons.

Old D&D: Dying cost you a level, time a resources wasted. 4e D&D: Dying brought you back with a 'death penalty' for a while.


Rough Draft suggestion:

Institute a new status 'Vigor'.
A PK death lowers your vigor.
A PK kill raises your vigor.
Vigor slowly returns toward neutral with time.
Negative Vigor means you face some penalities. (at different levels of negative)
Positive Vigor has no bonus, but buffers you against Vigor loss.


So, PK deaths will never cause any loss, just an inconvenience that goes away with time- No work is needed to recover from a PK. It will still suck to die, but no need to invest in 'bash time' for a recovery.

If you are triumphant in PK, you can buffer yourself against some vigor loss, or use PK to return to a normal status.

Of course it would have to be very carefully balanced, but it is an idea.